3 “[E]thno-symbolists consider the cultural elements Brandi, Cesare. 2001. Théorie de la restauration. Paris: Parzinger, Hermann. 2016. “Remodeling Shared of symbol, myth, memory, value, ritual and tradition INP. Centre des monuments historiques. Heritage and Collections Access: The Museum Island to be crucial to an analysis of ethnicity, nations and Constellation and Humboldt Forum Project in Berlin.” Clifford. James. 2007. "Quai Branly in Process."October nationalisms” (Smith (2009: 25). In Bernice L. Murphy (ed.), Museums, Ethics and Cultu- 4 https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/ 120 (Spring): 3–23. ral Heritage. London: Routledge and ICOM. afrique/felwine-sarr-le-poids-de-l-impense-colo- ICOM. 1979. "Etude, réalisée par l’ICOM, relative aux nial_2058754.html Sarr, Felwine, et Bénédicte Savoy. 2018. Rapport sur principes, conditions et moyens de la restitution ou du 2 Bénédicte Savoy organized a symposium with this la restitution du patrimoine culturel. Vers une nouvelle retour des biens culturels en vue de la reconstitution des title at the Collège de France on June 21, 2018. See “Du éthique relationnelle. Paris: Minstère de la Culture. droit des objets (à disposer d’eux-mêmes?),” https:// patrimoines dispersés." Museums 31 (1): 62–66. www.college-de-france.fr/site/benedicte-savoy/sympo- Smith, Anthony. 2009. Ethno-symbolism and Nationa- Mairesse, Francois. 2000. “La belle histoire, aux origines sium-2017-2018.htm. lism: A Cultural Approach. New York: Routledge. de la nouvelle muséologie.” In André Desvallées (ed.), References cited L’écomusée: Rêve ou réalité, special issue of Publics et Thomas, Nicholas. 2016. The Return of Curiosity: What Babelon, J.-P., et Chastel, André. 1994. La notion de Musées 17–18: 42. Museums Are Good for in the 21st Century. London: Reaction Books. patrimoine. Paris: Editions Liana Levi. Ndiaye, Malick (ed.). 2007. Réinventer les musées. Paris: Africultures.

first word remain a prisoner of European Museums” something: in response, other former colonial (Saar and Savoy 2018: 1). powers have revived and intensified their own Macron’s grand gesture was not simply a discussions about what to do with the African matter of objects. In the official advisory report heritage objects in their national museums. prepared at his request after this declaration, The possibility of restitution, previously a sub- Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy noted that ject more theoretical than practical, has begun the French president’s proclamation “was in- to look like it might become a fait accompli. In- scribed within a much more general approach creasingly the issue is not whether historically Restitution and the Logic of the toward the emancipation of memory”—by significant objects of African heritage should Postcolonial Nation-State which they meant that it was part of a broader be returned, but rather when, how, and under effort to come to terms with France’s past as an what conditions. John Warne Monroe imperial power (Sarr and Savoy 2018: 1). Since At the same time, however, archival decolonization, metropolitan French political evidence reveals a telling mixture of conti- It is no accident that so many accounts life has been marked by a strong tendency to nuity and discontinuity that is important to of the dramatic new turn restitution policy minimize the violence and grotesque inequity acknowledge if we are going to understand the has taken in Europe begin with a mention of nineteenth and twentieth century imperial- full ramifications of this incipient new phase in of French president Emmanuel Macron’s ism. As recently as 2005, the French National the lives of certain historically significant Af- now-famous November 28, 2017, remarks in Assembly overwhelmingly supported a law rican objects held for the time being in French Ouagadougou, where he called for “the tempo- mandating that school curricula “recognize and other national collections. When these rary or definitive restitution of African cultural in particular the positive role of the French objects return, they will function in a context heritage to Africa.” Like the Tennis Court Oath presence overseas” (Price 2007: 41). When it dramatically changed by the postcolonial of 1789, this was a rhetorical gesture self-con- comes to the presentation of objects in French emergence of the nation-state as the primary sciously made for History with a capital H: in national museums, as Sally Price has incisively unit of political organization in Africa. As one single statement, Macron drew a sharp observed, this reluctance to face the colonial such, they will afford scholars opportunities to line between the Old Regime of cultural policy past in all its brutal specificity has promoted pose new questions and reassess old paradigms and the new. As recently as August 2016, a mixture of universalizing aestheticism and of interpretation. the French state had steadfastly resisted calls cultural contextualization that censors the Surprisingly enough, this is not the first from the Republic of Benin to return objects facts of colonial domination in order to evoke time the French government has taken plundered during the Second Franco-Daho- a “1950s-style ethnographic present” (Price measures to ensure that a number of African mean war (1892–1894); a bit more than a year 2007: 174.) Macron’s stance is very different. objects deemed culturally important remain later, the Elysée Palace Twitter feed reinforced Rather than obscuring the realities of conquest on the continent. As early as 1921, administra- Macron’s statements with the triumphant dec- in a haze of ahistorical primitivist fantasy, tors in Dakar, capital of the colonial federation laration that “African heritage can no longer he has explicitly called colonization “a crime of French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale against humanity, a true example of barba- Française, AOF), began discussing the pos- rism.” Where his predecessors congratulated sibility of creating a museum in the city that John Warne Monroe is a historian of themselves for imagining France’s interactions would house a mixture of ethnographic objects modern Europe at Iowa State University. with its former colonies as a “dialogue” among and natural-historical specimens. These early He examines the places where the borders equals, Macron has instead proposed to take conversations took place in the context of a of “Europe” become porous: moments of France down a peg by “earnestly apologizing to broader shift in French colonial governance. In cultural contact and commercial exchange those toward whom we have committed these the face of growing unrest, as it became clear that force us to question what this thing “the acts” (Sarr and Savoy 2018: 2). among Africans that their military service in West” is and how it has come to be defined. Macron is clearly aiming for a self-conscious World War I would not be rewarded with new His current research focuses on France and break with the past, an effort to establish rights, a number of colonial administrators its African colonies between about 1880 and French national identity on terms better suited were drawn to what historian Raoul Girardet 1940; his book based on this work, Metro- to the present reality of a globalized world— (2005: 268) describes as “colonial humanism,” politan Fetish: African Sculpture and the though it is true that he has remained oddly an ideological conception of empire that, even Imperial French Invention of Primitive Art, silent about the heritage of far-flung territo- as it privileged the epistemological position of was published in September 2019. jmonroe@ ries still under French control, such as New the West, viewed the cultural difference of the iastate.edu Caledonia. Inconsistent as it may have been, colonized as a form of richness to be under- Macron’s declaration seems to have triggered stood in ethnographic terms, rather than a

6 african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00474 by guest on 02 October 2021 “barbarism” to be eradicated. As Gary Wilder served an essential function in the protection African community in which it resided. At the has argued, this ideology exerted a strong of heritage: climax of Leiris’s famous, searing account of influence on colonial governance in interwar the taking of a boli figure from the village of AOF, where it took the form of an administra- Colonization has provoked a rapid evolution of Dyabougou, for instance, he and his colleague tive policy that sought to extend aspects of the native society; it is unacceptable to allow native Eric Lutten gave the local chief 20 francs in works that embody a whole era of humanity to emergent European welfare state to the federa- exchange for the object. The chief handed back perish without making an effort to collect and tion with the intention of promoting economic conserve them.1 the money, but the two Frenchmen refused to development while simultaneously maintain- accept it (Leiris 1996: 195). ing social stability. Although assertions of Despite this grand rhetoric, from 1933 to Ironically, the growing tendency of Euro- potential—if always deferred—equality played 1936, there was no progress at all toward the pean visitors to buy objects from Africans is an important ideological role in this context, creation of a museum in Dakar. Then, on July what seems to have generated the political the goal was not to make colonized Africans 21, 1936, Governor-General Brévié wrote to will necessary to make Charton’s plan a reality full-fledged citizens, but instead to manage the Ministry of Colonies in Paris expressing three years after he proposed it. Correspon- them with a paternalistic regime based on “an his desire to establish a museum and archive dence scattered across archives in Paris, ethnological understanding of indigenous service “as soon as possible,” despite the Aix-en-Provence, and Dakar provides some society as a distinct, organic, and dynamic project’s having been “delayed by financial evidence to explain this sudden overcoming of totality” (Wilder 2005: 76). This approach, circumstances that you know all too well.”2 administrative inertia. The problem, it turns Wilder shows, was most influentially formu- On August 19, Brévié advanced the project out, was that several important figures in the lated by Albert Sarraut during his first stint as further by ordering the creation of the Institut colonial administration had become distressed Minister of Colonies, from 1920 to 1924, when Français d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar by the number of old and valuable heritage he urged a new focus on what he called la (Adedze 2002: 50).3 It was an organization objects leaving AOF in private hands. The first mise en valeur—the development—of French with a sweeping mandate: to coordinate sign of trouble was a report ethnologist and overseas possessions. The proposed museum scientific and ethnographic research across former colonial administrator Henri Labouret in Dakar made perfect sense as part of this the federation, publish an academic journal, submitted to the Musée d’Ethnographie du program: The institution would provide both and manage a combined museum, library, and Trocadéro after a collecting mission to Côte a clearinghouse for “local knowledge” about historical archive to be housed in the Hôtel de d’Ivoire in 1936. Though he had managed to the various populations under French control, la Circonscription, a large building that had obtain “more than 2000 interesting objects” for and galleries of objects that could serve to formerly served as the residence of the head the French national museums, he had found construct and reify the cultural differences of the city’s administrative district. Brévié also “worthwhile old pieces” to be surprisingly among them. ordered that funds be made available to each scarce. This situation, he said, was a conse- It is an expensive business, however, to build of the federation’s colonial governors for the quence of “the shameless traffic” in African institutions, and the informal discussions of purchase of objects for the museum. objects being conducted by Europeans eager to 1921 foundered on the shoals of economic Of course, this seemingly altruistic endeavor supply the burgeoning Western art market. “If reality. The first official report outlining the had dark undercurrents of paternalism and this commercial action continues,” he warned, proposed structure of the Dakar museum coercion. Most obviously, it was French colo- “soon the only objects on the Guinea Coast did not appear until 1933. That document, nial administrators, not Africans themselves, will be pieces specially made for Europeans written by Albert Charton, inspector general who would determine what heritage merited with no value of their own.”5 By 1938, this con- of education for the federation, is a revealing conservation. More subtly, there was the cern had spread all the way to the Ministry of testament to the continuing power of colonial issue of acquiring objects by purchase. When Colonies in Paris. In a strongly worded letter, humanism among AOF’s administrators. Charton wrote his June 1933 report, the Musée the minister himself, Jacques Mandel, urged Charton’s case for the museum emphasized d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris had the governor general of AOF to protect “the its value to the local population, especially to already begun sending out a pamphlet en- local artistic heritage [patrimoine]” from the the elites on whose collaboration the colonial couraging colonial administrators to “gather” activities of private collectors.6 government depended: [recueillir] and document objects for its collec- Despite these concerns, financial resources tions (Anon. [Leiris] 1931). The first of what for the museum remained slow to material- We have taken charge of the future and the would eventually be forty collection-building ize. Shortly after establishing IFAN, Brévié interests of the native populations of West Africa. was swept from office by the triumph of the We must not overlook anything that concerns expeditions in Africa funded by that museum, Popular Front government in France. His them: reviving their past, showing the products the famous 1931 Mission Dakar-Djibouti, of their industry, studying their customs, bearing had also already sent numerous objects back replacement as governor-general, Marcel de witness to their level of civilization are not only to France. The mode of collection Charton Coppet, did not share the same budgetary scientific tasks, but political necessities, occasions proposed, in turn, was modeled after the one priorities. In his view, the Hôtel de la Circon- for understanding, demonstrations of sympathy. the Dakar-Djibouti expedition had used: cash scription was more valuable as a residence Knowledge of native life in its variety and origi- payment. Charton suggested that when it for high administrators than as a museum, so nality is part of our colonial culture. came to building the collection of his projected he only consented to give half the building to museum, “it would doubtless be impolitic IFAN and made no provision for any public The museum, Charton continued, would be to pursue a strategy of requisitioning; if they galleries. Coppet’s administration ended with particularly important to “educated natives,” receive money, the natives who yield these the Popular Front in 1938, but the effort to who would see its displays as a demonstration pieces to the museum could be considered create a museum remained stalled. Mandel’s of “the extent of France’s interest in the people to have no further claim to them [seraient desire to protect African heritage faded into she protects.” He also stressed the impor- ainsi désintéressés] .” 4 L’Afrique fantôme, Michel the background in the face of impending war tance of including a special section devoted Leiris’s classic first-person account of the with Germany. The Hôtel de la Circonscription to “works of native art with an indisputable Mission Dakar-Djibouti, gives a clear sense of was converted to a hospital in the lead-up to artistic value and character. (Wood sculptures, how little consent could be involved in these the Battle of Dakar in 1940, and the IFAN bronzes and ivories, rugs and embroider- transactions when the item “up for sale” was museum did not begin officially registering ies, etc.)” This attention to preserving and of fundamental spiritual importance to the objects until 1941. displaying “precious” objects, Charton argued,

VOL. 52, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2019 african arts 7 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00474 by guest on 02 October 2021 | The museum’s first galleries did not open on display in a French museum, he observed, Traditions are revived or invented; events that to the public until after World War II. Within was “a little like having the fundamental works contradict cherished narratives of unity are a few years, IFAN had expanded its presence of French heritage on display in Berlin.”7 The either downplayed or acknowledged, con- in the colonies and laid the groundwork for comparison is telling, because it reflects the demned, and in that way recast. The future of additional museums in Abidjan (1942) and extent to which, historically speaking, the “restituted” African objects will be a fascinat- Bamako (1953). At that point, as historian nation-state and the museum are tightly imbri- ing chapter in this ongoing process—and will Frederick Cooper has argued, the French cated institutions that both first took shape in provide an important new subject of study for government’s approach to its African colonies Europe. European conquest, in turn, was one historians of African art. changed. The theoretical but always deferred of the primary vectors by which they spread Notes promises of equality that had characterized elsewhere. All translations from French are the author's unless inter­war “colonial humanism” gave way to In the case of the now-independent nations otherwise noted. efforts that were more substantial—but still that once composed the federation of French 1 Albert Charton, “Organisation du musée de l’A.O.F. à Dakar,” report to Governor-General Jules Brévié, June marked with a problematic degree of ambiv- West Africa, the rudimentary museum 7, 1933, dossier “Organisation et creation du musée,” O alence. Under the constitution of the Fourth infrastructure that the French left behind has 606 31, Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar (ANS), pp. 1–3, 5. This typescript also mentions the earlier Republic in 1946, the old metropole and become a tool for adaptation to new purposes discussion that took place in 1921, for which no other empire became the “French Union,” a single in a changed global reality. The same goes for documentation survives. political entity governed from Paris. While the concept of the nation-state itself, which 2 Jules Brévié to G. Joseph, director of political affairs for the Ministry of Colonies, July 21, 1936, dossier the former colonies could now elect repre- as Benedict Anderson (2006) observes, has “Organisation et création du musée,” O 606 31, ANS. sentatives, structural differences in the degree proved to be surprisingly “modular”—capable 3 For the August 19 date of issuance for Brévié’s arrêté of representation and glaring inequalities of of transplantation to a vast array of different (Adedze gives the date as August 22), see Théodore Monod, “Remarques sur l’Institut français d’Afrique development between center and periphery cultures and regions. The construction of a noire,” typescript, April 30, 1938, dossier “IFAN, generated considerable tensions. The metro- coherent national identity depends on an Création du musée, rapports, correspondances, arrêtés (1931–1939),” O 606 31, ANS. politan French proved unwilling to finance the ability to renarrate history in ways that foster 4 Charton, “Organisation du musée de l’A.O.F. à extensive development that would have created a sense of unity while obscuring aspects of the Dakar,” p. 8. true material equality between former colo- past that challenge that cohesion. As a national 5 “Seconde note au sujet de la mission Labouret,” undated typescript report, 2AM1 K56c, subfolder “La- nizers and the former colonized; the former institution, the museum plays an important bouret,” Archives du Musée de l’Homme, Paris (AMH). colonized, in turn, quickly lost patience with role in this process, marshaling the past to On the basis of the itinerary described, this report came relegation to second-class status (see Cooper serve the political and cultural requirements of from Labouret’s mission of 1936. 6 Minister of Colonies Jacques Mandel to Léon 2005). Some engaged in violent revolts that the present. Geismar, acting Governor-General of AOF, Oct. 4, 1938, were harshly repressed, as in Indochina, Alge- In the recent debate over restitution, we see dossier “Musées d’Afrique,” O 606 31, ANS. 7 “Le Bénin demande la restitution des 5,000 oeuvres ria, and Madagascar. Eventually, anti-colonial this aspect of the “museum-function” in the d’art volées par la France lors de la colonization,” inter- movements that framed their struggles in logic of the nation-state very clearly. First, as view with Louis-Georges Tin, Panafricain TV, Aug. 8, nationalist terms won out, and France’s former Z.S. Strother (2019) observes, the common 2016. https://www.panafricain.tv/benin-demande-resti- tution-5-000-oeuvres-dart-volees-france-lors-de-coloni- colonies became independent nation-states. framing of this question has placed a dispro- sation/. This, in tandem with the collapse of the British portionate emphasis on antique examples of Empire, has done much to contribute to the portable sculpture in wood, ivory, or metal. References cited emergence of the global order now familiar to While objects of that type have been the Afri- Adedze, Agbenyega. 2002. “Symbols of Triumph: IFAN and the Colonial Museum Complex in French West us, in which the nation-state, rather than the can cultural products most coveted by Western Africa (1938–1960).” Museum Anthropology 25 (2): 50. empire, has become the basic unit of political collectors and museums, they do not by any Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: organization across the world. means constitute the sum total of African cul- Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. This new nation-state paradigm is the tural heritage. They are, however, the elements ed. London: Verso. political context in which the latest calls for of that heritage that are among the easiest to Anon. [Michel Leiris]. 1931. Instructions sommaires restitution of African cultural heritage are incorporate into museums, which is import- pour les collecteurs d’objets ethnographiques. Paris: Musée taking place. Museums, of course, play an ant to bear in mind here. They are also the d’ethnographie. important role in nation-building by codifying material that formed the basis of the colonial Cooper, Frederick. 2005. “States, Empires, and Political heritage, articulating visions of history, and museum collections that became “national” Imagination.” In Colonialism in Question: Theory, modeling national identity for citizens and after decolonization. While the Sarr-Savoy Knowledge, History, pp. 153–203. Berkeley: University of visitors alike. They also have an institutional report envisages restitution claims made by California Press. logic that shapes both what is included in their communities or families and warns against Leiris, Michel. 1966. “L’Afrique fantôme.” In Jean Jamin collections—usually material objects deemed unthinking transposition of European catego- (ed.), Miroir de l’Afrique. Paris: Gallimard. somehow significant or extraordinary—and ries to non-European settings, it is significant Price, Sally. 2007. Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s how those collections are presented. While this that the three major claims made so far—by Museum on the Quai Branly. Chicago: University of institutional logic makes claims to univer- the Republic of Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Sene- Chicago Press. sality, the museum also generally has some gal—have come from national governments on Sarr, Felwine, and Bénédicte Savoy. 2018. The Restitution connection to a national context and some behalf of national museums. of Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics, trans. Drew S. Burk. Paris: Ministère de la culture. functions related to the conservation of items In practice, given the political and insti- perceived as constituting “national heritage.” tutional realities of the postcolonial world, Strother, Z.S. 2019. “Eurocentrism Still Sets the Terms of Restitution of African Art.” The Art Newspaper, Jan. 18, Louis-Georges Tin, a black French academic restitution is not simply a “return” of “lost” https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/eurocen- and activist, made this point very strongly heritage; it is an act that creates a new history trism-still-defines-african-art. while advocating for the restitution of objects and new identity in the governmental context Wilder, Gary. 2005. The French Imperial Nation-State: to the Republic of Benin in a 2016 interview. of the nation-state. The past is always being Negritude and Colonial Humanism Between the Two Having the treasures of King Behanzin’s court reconstructed to serve the needs of the present. World Wars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

8 african arts AUTUMN 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00474 by guest on 02 October 2021